Beginning of My Doll Making

When our son moved out of our home after graduating from college, I decided to turn his room into a sewing room. So - out went the waterbed. Up went the wallpaper (another thing I learned to do while living in Stockton, California.) I had loved to sew since I was about 10 years old when I learned to sew on a treddle sewing machine, making doll clothes incidentally. The theme I had chosen for my sewing room was "Love Makes the World Go Round".

When one of the ladies at our church announced that she was going to start a class on making porcelain dolls, I was excited. I told her I wanted to make a clown doll for my sewing room. She said she recommended making two dolls at once because you could be painting one of them while the other was being fired. So, reluctantly I started making two dolls. Here are those two dolls.

Picture above is the greenware for one of the dolls I made. This is how each doll started out. Carol, our teacher, had the molds and she made the greenware for the students. We smoothed the seams and rough edges and she took them home and fired them. Then she brought them back to class and we painted them in stages with firings in between.

After this comes the fun part - putting the doll together, setting the eyes, putting on the wig, making clothes for it. Making the clothes was fun, but I also enjoyed making shoes for them. I searched around in my doll room closet and came up with a shoebox size plastic box that I had stored extra doll shoes in. I bought patterns for the shoes and bought remnants of leather from a store that sold leather. The remnants were not very expensive. Making shoes was not hard, but it was a little tedious, especially the smaller ones.

Here is a picture of some of the patterns. 

One of my favorite things to do back in those doll-making days was going to doll shows. They had some fantastic ones in California, often at fair grounds where they would have a huge barn like building filled with dolls and doll making stuff. That's where I bought most of the eyes and wigs as well as antique lace, tiny buttons, and all kinds of good things. 

I've enjoyed sharing my doll making experiences with you. Actually I created this blog just to experiment with different things rather than doing it on my regular blog and risk messing it up. After I created this one, I liked it so well I wanted to share it. I made over 30 dolls back in the 1980s. As I have time I'll tell about them. For now, this is it. I can't spend all of my time blogging although my Hubby probably thinks I do.

Hugs,

Charlotte

H